Aldershot Town 0, Hartlepool United 3

‘THEY took their chances, we didn’t take ours’.

That was the frank assessment of Aldershot Town boss Danny Searle as his side’s topsy-turvy season took another twist at the EBB Stadium on Saturday.

Just four days after thumping Dover 4-0, the Shots succumbed to goals from Josh Hawkes, Gavan Holohan and Nicke Kabamba as Hartlepool perfected a smash-and-grab raid in front of a healthy crowd of 2,768 on Non-League Day.

And it could have been worse but for Mitch Walker’s first-half penalty save.

“Quite a few people said that we didn’t play that well but when you watch the game back there were parts of it where we were outstanding and the difference was purely on Tuesday against Dover we took our chances and on Saturday we didn’t.

“In fact, we created more chances and better chances against Hartlepool than we did against Dover, but they took their chances and we didn’t,” said Searle.

“It’s frustrating because it’s those small details. It shows how good we were by the fact that the Hartlepool keeper was in the team of the week for the National League, because he made some unbelievable saves.

“It was frustrating because there was not a lot more we could have done in terms of creating chances other than stick the ball in the back of the net, which we failed to do.”

Searle’s boys were boosted by the club’s ‘Pay What You Want’ initiative, a nationwide scheme to promote non-league football during the autumn international break.

And he was hopeful people would still return despite the loss.

“It was disappointing, we wanted nothing more than to give the fans the second win in a row,” he said.

“We tried everything we could to make it happen, but it just wasn’t to be on Saturday, but we’ll look at it again and work on our finishing, work on taking our chances and then hopefully we can start to put it right more often than not.

“But we don’t want people coming only if we win because that’s not support for me, support is people who are there good, bad and indifferent, and we’ve got a really good nucleus of fans at the club where they’re here come rain or shine, win, lose or draw.”

The defeat was Aldershot’s ninth in 17 games of an odd season which has seen them have precious few draws – and has drawn some criticism from a small section of the fanbase.

“When people talk about frustration, the frustration for any club is consistency. You want consistency but at this level it’s hard to come by, but we’re working hard and we have plenty of games left to do that,” said Searle.

“We never said we were going to get into the play-offs and win the league and all that kind of thing because it would have been unrealistic for me to do that.

“We’re a new set of players, we’ve got a relatively young side, we’ve got hurdles to overcome, slight hangovers from last season in terms of people voicing opinions of what the team should and shouldn’t be doing and we’ve got no other option than to be honest because what’s the point of trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes?

“The players will graft, they will work so hard and anyone who thinks they won’t is more than welcome to join me and watch us train because we work very hard.”

And he added: “We are trying to build something long term and that takes time and patience, but I think the majority of fans can see what we are doing and they are being patient with us. There is always going to be a minority that is going to get frustrated but I don’t begrudge them that, they’re paying fans and they are entitled to their opinions.”